The holidays start here at Ralph's, with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. You could do a classic herb roasted turkey, or spice it up and make turkey tacos. Serve up a go-to shrimp cocktail, or use Simple Truth wild-caught shrimp for your first Cajun risotto. Make creamy mac and cheese, or a spinach artichoke fondue from our selection of Murray's cheese.

No matter how you shop, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your holiday traditions, Ralph's, fresh for everyone. It's Friday, and that means live Q&A. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets. I am your host. Today is Friday, December 8, 2023. Almost to the end of the year. I hope that you are on track for any last minute goal accomplishment here at the end of the year, and I hope that your 2024 planning is well underway.

Here at Radical Personal Finance, each and every Friday in which I can arrange the appropriate recording technology, we record a live Q&A show. It works just like call-in talk radio. You call in, talk about anything you want, ask any questions, raise any topics, give me any feedback, argue with me.

I love it. I wish some of you guys would call in and argue with me. I love a good argument. I don't get enough of it. You guys are very kind. If you would like to join me on one of these Friday Q&A shows, you can do that by becoming a patron of the show.

You go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, sign up to support the show on Patreon, and that will gain access for you to one of these Friday Q&A shows. So I welcome your presence next week. Today we begin with Annette in North Carolina. Annette, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?

Joshua, and I appreciate you taking my call. You have worked extensively with your children on foreign language. Can you recommend two to three Spanish resources for a 10th grader? At what level is the 10th grader currently? The first level. So total new beginner? New beginner. Yes. So I'll give you three.

The first thing I would begin with is by going to the website refold.la. It's refold.la. That website is a project of a team of guys that basically have put together their most comprehensive start to how do you learn a language with major excellence. The only one that I remember the name of, it was started by Matt versus Japan who achieved a very high level of Japanese, doing all Japanese all the time, and he's been very popular in those circles.

He had a previous company that he did. He moved to Refold. I think he's still involved, but I'm not sure, et cetera. There is a comprehensive guide at refold.la that is interesting to read. It's probably the best single source of how to learn a language completely all the way through starting from nothing.

The guys that coordinate that are focused on developing a very high level of fluency. So they're not just trying to get through a high school class. So the guide is useful. However, the resource that I'm recommending to you is the vocabulary deck that they sell for Anki. They have a vocabulary deck that is called ES1K, Spanish 1,000, the Espanol 1,000.

ES1K vocabulary deck. And what they have done is they have created a 1,000 word deck of flashcards for Spanish that takes away all of the cognates, so the obvious easy words that are the same in Spanish and English, but just pronounced similar, and they've used the highest frequency vocabulary.

They've turned those into Anki flashcards for the free program Anki, and those flashcards feature the word in Spanish, the word in English, an audio reading of the word by a native speaker, as well as a sentence of the audio speaker, reader of the word, just simply reading that sentence.

I think they charge, I don't know, 20 bucks, something like that for it, but it is an ideal first set of flashcards to learn for the Spanish language. They have it for about a half a dozen languages, Spanish is one of the ones that they include. Because really, until you get 1,000 words under your belt, one of the first things you want to just do is study and learn 1,000 words as quickly as possible.

To be clear, you're only trying to recognize the word when you hear it in the foreign language. But doing flashcard word study is a really great way to get started with language acquisition, and that's the best resource that I know of. Ideally, this would go on your 10th grade student's phone or mobile device, and would allow basically micro study sessions.

What I would try to see him or her do would be to spend 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at noon, 10 minutes in the evening just doing some flashcards on Anki. You want to be able to recognize those 1,000 words as quickly as possible. Now, concurrent with this, the second resource I would suggest is on YouTube.

There is a YouTube channel, and it's also a Patreon page called Ayon Academy, A-Y-A-N, Ayon Academy. If you go to Ayon Academy and look for Spanish, you will find that they have a number of books available. They have Poco a Poco, they have Learn Spanish by the Natural Method, Poco a Poco, they have several other Spanish courses.

If you sign up for their – the first ones are free on YouTube. It looks like they have about 40 – excuse me, it looks like they have about 20 or so of their videos for Poco a Poco for free on YouTube. But you'll sign up for their Patreon page, it's pretty inexpensive, and then you get audio reading of that.

You can download the Poco a Poco book, and what this is is this is a natural method book. And a natural method means basically how can we create a story that is so simple and so straightforward that even somebody who has very little exposure to the language can understand it right from the very beginning.

And I think this is a really good way to start because it allows you to get quick exposure to a lot of vocabulary in a very straightforward way. And so you can download for free the Poco a Poco book and their other Spanish courses. They have probably two or three of them available on their Patreon page, and then you can listen to the audio.

So I would spend some time doing that as well. Then the third resource that I would use for a 10th grader is I would sign up for the website link, l-i-n-g-q.com, link.com, and I would start going through their link mini stories. And this you do on a computer or on a mobile device, and you read through the stories.

And the way you do it is you start with a mini story, and then you read through it using a feature in that program that's called sentence mode. And you need to learn how to use the program and mark the words that you know and don't know. But go through their initial mini stories as a good starting point.

And what you can do, the benefit of that, is that these stories are simple. The stories themselves are about two minutes per story. And what they do is they have a very simple story, and it takes about two minutes. The first time it's done in first person, so, excuse me, the first time it's done in the third person.

So I think the first one is like Marcus wakes up in the morning, Marcus has a cup of coffee, then he drives to work in his car, et cetera, he's a cook in a restaurant. And so it does this little two-minute story in the third person. And it repeats the exact same story in the first person.

So my name is Marcus, I wake up in the morning at six o'clock, I have a cup of coffee before I go to work, I drive my car to work, et cetera. So it does it in the first person. And then it takes about three minutes of questioning about the story.

And the questions are basically another form of repetition. So is Marcus a cook in a restaurant? Yes, Marcus is a cook in a restaurant. Does Marcus wake up early? Yes, Marcus wakes up at six o'clock in the morning. Does Marcus drive to work in his car or does he take the bus?

Marcus drives to work in his car. And they're super, super repetitive, but the story format is a really good way of understanding the language. And so if you start with those three resources, then in the course of a couple to four weeks, like basically less than a month, very quickly your learner should acquire a couple thousand words of Spanish vocabulary.

And at that point in time, it's very simple to go directly to native language content, very directly to native language, sorry, native speaker content, hopefully that is leveled or that you can level in some way. And then it's just a matter of choosing resources that are a good fit for the student.

So if the student, it's really good to spend a lot of time listening. So if the student is into TV shows, he or she likes to watch TV or soap operas or something like that, you look for things on Netflix and you listen to those, or you look for YouTube series.

If the student is a reader and is willing to read, you do lots of reading. And as quickly as possible, you try to get to things that are interesting to the student based upon the subject matter. And so depending on the motivation of the student, I would say one to two, maybe three months maximum, you could consume all of those resources, the 60 mini stories, the Poco a Poco book, and learn the thousand flashcards, and you're fully ready for native language material.

And then you'll just want to put in some crutches that will help the student to, excuse me, native speaker material, that you'll want to put in some crutches that will help the student to use that native speaker material effectively. So there are a couple of, for example, for TV or YouTube, you can either take the transcripts from that and you can read them with a dictionary using a program like LingQ, or you can use a couple of Chrome extensions to automatically show you the subtitles as well as the translation if you still need translation.

As quickly as possible, you want to get just to native language subtitles underneath it. For reading, LingQ is the best resource. There are a couple of other software programs that are free and other people that have kind of built similar things. Or but basically, and then also there's lots and lots of leveled material available for listening and for reading.

So there are graded readers, there is, you know, Spanish news in slow Spanish or simple Spanish podcasts, things like that. And so you basically use those tools to make it accessible. And then it's just a matter of ticking up the hours. And the goal is to get to, with Spanish, an initial goal should be about 650 hours.

The goal is to get 650 hours as quickly as possible. And so if you can find content that will suck the student in, then you can get to the point of two to four hours a day would be really great. And we're not just doing it for, it's not study, you're doing some study, some word cards, flashcards, etc.

But the study could be limited to about 20-30 minutes. But if you're getting two to three hours of content exposure using interesting books, interesting shows, interesting podcasts, interesting YouTube channels, etc., then in three hours a day, you're at, what, a couple hundred days to get to 650 hours, a few hundred hours to a few hundred days.

So Spanish to an upper level, intermediate level, basically about a B2, my target would be getting there in about a year if the student is motivated. But that's how I would do it. And those are the three resources I would begin with. So how do you spell the Anki, is that O-N-K-I or what?

It's A-N-K-I. Anki. A-N-K-I. I've seen it. Yeah. I've seen it. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And have a Merry Christmas. My pleasure. We go on to Adele in the state of Texas. Adele, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I have two questions, and I guess I just need to get a second opinion, force of action.

One is, my first question is, my mother passed away and I have a small inheritance coming. I'm Canadian. I now live in Idaho. I have 200,000 Canadians coming my way that needs to be transferred from the executor's account to me in Idaho, and I'm looking for the cheapest way to transfer money from Canada to the U.S.

I've done a little research. It seems like Y might be the best way to go, like an online money transfer service, because they offer international money transfers at lower rates and better exchange rates and actual real exchange rates without markup. But I just wanted to check with you and see your opinion on that.

For that amount of money, I would just do a bank-to-bank transfer using an international transfer, or Y's is also fine. I don't see any clear reason why you would choose one or the other, so I would just do an ACH transfer. It's relatively simple and arrives in a few days, and generally the fees are pretty reasonable.

And then the other comment would just be, consider just keeping the money in a Canadian bank account. Unless you need the money today, etc., then because it's so accessible, it could be worthwhile just keeping the money in a Canadian bank account, and possibly even in Canadian dollars, and then just use it when you need to using a debit card.

That would be the other simple solution. Because the exchange rates are so poor right now for Canadians in the U.S. You yourself are Canadian. Do you go back to Canada and visit? I do, but it's going to become rarer and rarer as I have no more immediate. The direct answer to your question is, I would just do a wire transfer, an ACH transfer from bank account to bank account.

That will solve it. It's done, squared away, just taken care of. You can use WISE if necessary. Lots of people love WISE. It's fine. So I don't know what the best rates would be with that. You would have to check that yourself. But my comment is simply that there are benefits to having different currencies in your portfolio, and there are benefits to having bank accounts in multiple countries.

So because there are benefits to that, if somebody comes into a situation in which it's convenient to have a bank account in a friendly country like Canada or in another currency like the Canadian dollar, then my only comment is you might consider just keeping it there in Canada and keeping it in the Canadian dollar.

Now if you have a prediction about the strength or weakness of the Canadian dollar, then of course you should follow your prediction. But a lot of times it's useful to have some money that is in another currency even though the exchange rates fluctuate. And since it's so easy to have a Canadian bank account, and many Canadians or many people in Idaho will go to Canada on occasion, then just keep some of it in Canadian dollars.

And if or when you go to Canada, then spend from your Canadian bank account. And then if you want to spend in the United States, if you have an account that has a debit card attached to it, you just go to an ATM and you get money out or you just spend from your Canadian account when it's convenient to do it.

So it all has to do with what is your use of the money. If you needed this money today to pay off some bills or do something urgent, then of course that wouldn't be applicable. But if you're just going to take the money and stick it into a savings account in the United States, then consider just keeping some of it in Canada for the diversification benefits.

Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. I mean, that's a good point. And on that note, my second question is about how to use this money wisely. The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. You could do a classic herb roasted turkey or spice it up and make turkey tacos, serve up a go-to shrimp cocktail, or use Simple Truth wild-caught shrimp for your first Cajun risotto.

You could do a creamy mac and cheese or a spinach artichoke fondue from our selection of Murray's cheese. No matter how you shop, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your holiday traditions. Ralph's. Fresh for everyone. The first thing I want to do is pay off some high-interest debts.

And the second is probably just restock the war chest and have the emergency fund replenished. The next I'm thinking about doing is maybe investing in some crypto. I purchased your crypto course. And then investing in myself, I'm looking at starting a new online business. Would you have any other advice?

It's not a lot of money, but I want to be smart with it. What you're describing is the smart way to do it. So in a perfect world with you and me behaving as perfectly rational persons rather than emotional humans, coming into a windfall of any kind, meaning an inheritance or an extra bonus at work or winning a lottery payment or a prize of some kind, ideally we would always have an itemized list of financial goals pre-established that we've been thinking about for six months or a year, et cetera, and then we just go down our list of goals.

But of course, we don't do that, but that's the ideal thing. That would be the ideal thing. And the reason I pointed out is that I don't think that windfalls should be treated any differently than anything else. So what I'm trying to get people to not do by making my funny little joke is not to say, "Oh, there's a windfall.

Let me go and spend it." Or, "Hey, here's a windfall. I have to save this in my mother's honor," or something like that. Those kinds of emotional things have their place, but ideally the money should just be a way to move us forward on the board game of life.

Okay, skip forward 15 spaces. Great. So what you described, I think, is an ideal order. So if you have high interest rate debt at the moment, then that would negate everything I said about keep the money in Canada and stick it in a savings account. No, pay off the high interest rate debt.

That's a great thing. If it comes to establishing and kind of beefing up your emergency fund, great. That's a smart move. And so definitely beef it up. You might put most of it into the bank and then keep $3,000 in Canada or something like that. By the way, back to the previous question before I continue, just note that your simplest thing might just simply be to open an account at a Canadian bank and then have a Canadian dollar account and a U.S.

dollar account and then just write your checks out of the U.S. dollar account. So you can live in the United States, use a Canadian bank account and just pay off your debts directly from it, and that will probably give you the best conversion transfer because you're just converting at the bank itself, just moving it from your Canadian dollar account to your U.S.

dollar account. So from what you're saying, since you have a bunch of expenses here, that might be the simplest way to do it as well. Then in terms of down the list, crypto or Bitcoin specifically or something else, that's okay if you value what it's for. But remember that for public record, my course is not about speculating on Bitcoin, etc.

It's a matter of acquiring Bitcoin because you want it and want to use it for the long term. So if you have, I don't make predictions in that course or even in general about you're going to make a fortune with Bitcoin. So just be clear that if you have other investment opportunities, you should weigh those against purchasing Bitcoin or any other investment.

And then your best investment is generally going to be into yourself. That's where you get your highest rate of return. So if you know of some way to invest into yourself, then you should generally prioritize that over and above everything that relies on an external market or player, such as Bitcoin or such as mutual funds, etc.

So I like your list and I think that's a rational list. Okay. Thank you so much, Joshua. I appreciate it. My pleasure. We go on to Jordan in New York. Jordan, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey, thanks so much. I appreciate you taking the time.

My pleasure. Okay. I don't have a super well-formed question, but it certainly goes to the area of real estate. I own three investment properties. I have my salary and my wife's salary combined. Active income is around $200,000 and I'm not understanding how I properly deduct expenses from my passive losses against my active income.

And I think I can't do that because I make too much money, in which case I'd like to understand better where I can benefit from those passive losses down the line. Passive losses are only deductible to $3,000 per year against other active income. When you have passive gains and passive losses, you net your passive gains against your passive losses and you cannot take excess losses against your active income beyond $3,000 per year.

You can bank the loss. So let's say you have a $50,000 passive loss this year. You can bank it and take it out $3,000 a year at a time, but you cannot net your passive losses against your active gains in any way other than the $3,000 limit. So if I'm experiencing larger passive losses, is there some planning I should do down the line to benefit from that?

You can try to turn them into active losses. That's what you should try to do. And so in real estate, there are three designations that a real estate investor can have. That of a passive investor, that of an active investor, and that of a full-time professional. And so one of the things that some real estate professionals try to do is they try to convert themselves into that full-time professional status because in that situation, their losses now become active losses and they can be deductible against other forms of income.

There's a clear test as to what is necessary for you to become a full-time professional. It is doable, but it's only doable if that's genuinely your actual full-time endeavor. And so what works for a lot of people is if you have a husband and a wife team, what many people will do is let's say the husband has a job or a business or something that's his primary activity, but the wife becomes a full-time active investor.

And she gets a real estate license, she manages the properties, she racks up the hours, etc. And that allows them to claim that full-time status and deduct all of their losses against other forms of income. Got it. That actually is a great idea. My wife will be leaving her full-time job when we have a baby in February.

So that is a possibility for next year for sure. It's a possibility. Just look up the rules. I don't have them on the top of my head, but a quick web search will find them for you. How do I become a full-time active real estate investor? She needs to be genuinely dedicating a significant amount of time to the real estate business.

That needs to be documented. This is an area of abuse, and so it's not uncommon to be audited. So she just needs to document her time, document her training, document her activity, and that can work out well. And I think that that structure is in many cases the most efficient structure for a husband and wife to build their wealth.

You have your job and/or business that is disconnected from the family's investments, and she spends her time curating and taking care of the family investments. And that allows you to deduct more of the expenses against your business income. It allows you to have a very efficient structure, and it allows her to be looking for the big wins while you create the income and the active income.

So I like that structure of a husband and wife team very much if she's interested and willing to do it. Great. I appreciate that. Can I ask one more short question? Go ahead. I have, in the past, I've pretty much always prepared my own taxes, or I've had a sort of family friend prepare them, who's been fine, but I think I need something a little more sophisticated.

Where would you suggest I start with that? I, in general, don't think that tax preparation is sophisticated. So you may want to solicit good tax advice, but there is a difference between tax preparation and tax advice. In general, tax preparation is absurdly easy if you have good records. And so if you have good detailed records, and you have carefully documented all of your transactions, you have your receipts ready, et cetera, then the tax preparer is basically a functionary.

He's not really doing anything except putting numbers in the computer. And you yourself can put those numbers in the computer pretty well. So my first question for someone like you is, how good is your bookkeeping? Most of your big wins, from tax preparation perspective, come down to your skill with bookkeeping.

Do you have receipts? Do you have receipts for the $23 that you spent at Home Depot to go and get a replacement part to fix something at the house, and now you can expense that properly, that $23? So if you have that stuff, and you can basically go to your bookkeeping software of choice and say, print out my end of year report, then you can pretty much go to just about any generic tax preparation software, and you can enter the numbers yourself.

Because that's all your accountant is going to do. Even if you go to a local accounting office, generally speaking, your accountant is having his interns or his team in India or somebody do that. So that's tax preparation. If you don't have good bookkeeping, then you're going to wind up overpaying on tax preparation, because now your tax accountant is trying to figure out end of year bookkeeping.

And so you should probably fix your bookkeeping issues. If you need to fix your bookkeeping issues, then fix them with a-- and you don't want to do it yourself-- fix them with a bookkeeper. Just hire a bookkeeper and work with that person separately. So now let's flip to tax advice.

How do you get good tax advice? You may be able to find somebody who specializes in working with real estate investors who can give you excellent tax advice. I have found that most of the time, your best source of real estate tax advice, though, will come from another DIY real estate investor who's really into it, and/or just from good studying the tax books.

Tax planning for real estate is fairly simple and fairly straightforward, but it's largely a matter of understanding the distinctions of how property is categorized, what expenses are deductible versus what expenses are depreciable. And it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty well documented in books at this point in time. And so if you just invest in a handful of good books, then you're going to know most of what there is to be known about this, especially if you're just doing single family rentals or just basic stuff.

There's no secrets out there. It's just a matter of finding the right reference manuals. I would suggest to you John Reed's book, Aggressive Tax Avoidance for Real Estate Investors. This is probably your best starting point. Again, that's John Reed, Aggressive Tax Avoidance for Real Estate Investors. And if you go through that and you're careful about your bookkeeping, you'll have most of your planning ideas.

And so at the level you're describing, I don't know, unless you find someone in your local investors club or someone locally who specializes in working with real estate investors, I'm not sure that you even need someone to do that. The people who really benefit from a very knowledgeable accountant are people who are using the accountant's bookkeeping services in their business and who find someone who can do a lot of proactive planning or the people who just need the services of simplifying their life.

I'm not against hiring accountants, but what I have found is that people often have this expectation that somehow I'm going to magically hire this accountant and he's going to give me all kinds of advice. And then the accountant is a functionary who does a great job preparing the tax returns, et cetera.

And like, well, where was all the advice? Well, you got to do it yourself. And most, the best, the people who pay the least taxes are those who take an interest in the subject and educate themselves very detailed in a very careful way about the tax code. And then once they have that education, they will know more than the accountant about their specific area.

It's always this way because a professional has to have a broad range of experience and a broad range of expertise. You only have to have a very narrow range of experience. And so your knowledge can actually go much deeper than my knowledge can because you just have to worry about the specifics of your thing where I have to go and try to absorb a body of knowledge across a broad basis.

So how to find a good accountant, barring everything I've just said, I would start by asking around. I would call if you're involved in real estate investment club, I would ask people if they know people who are specializing in real estate, and then I would call my wealthy friends and I would just simply get a referral and or use another professional.

So professionals are good at referring people around. When I was an insurance agent, I would have referred you to six different accountants and done a good job with those referrals. And so call people that you know who are professionals, et cetera, and try to find somebody based upon that as well.

That's a good way to go about it. Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. I appreciate it. My pleasure. We go on to Jason in Washington, D.C. Jason, welcome to the show. Glad to serve you today. Hi, Joshua. Thank you for taking my call. So I wanted to get your input and perspective on our planning here.

So about two years ago, we turned our townhome into a rental home after buying a primary home. So we've had this rental for two years. It's my understanding that we can sell our rental property without capital gains tax within the three or five-year rule. So I'm looking to get input and perspective from you if we should sell or keep the rental.

A little bit of background, we have a property management company managing it for the last two years. It has been a very smooth process. Not a lot of expenses as far as things going wrong with the property. The property is currently income producing roughly about $900 per month after property management fees.

We've had about $1,000 worth of fixes in the last, well, each year of things we've had to fix. And our income is roughly around $240. So we haven't really realized any tax benefits from that. So I'm just swirling around in my head on should we sell to avoid the capital gains and realize a large sum from selling the property?

Is there any additional information I can give you to kind of maybe help? If you sold the property, what would you expect the total sales price to be that a buyer would buy it in today's market? It looks like roughly $468,000. What is your tax basis in the property?

How much did you pay for it? $235,000. And do you have any guesses on what you would pay in terms of sales costs, real estate agents, et cetera, if you sold it out of the $468,000? From my understanding, it's 6%, so let's say 6 to 8%. So basically, you have an opportunity right now for two things.

The first thing is – actually, there are three factors that you could consider. Let me go to three. Number one, the first thing you can consider is simply this particular property. Is this property a good rental that you would be excited to buy over again? Or is this a property that's okay, it's okay, but it's not great?

If you have a property that you – there are properties that are great to live in. There are properties that are great as rentals. And so you just want to ask yourself, would I buy this particular property over again as a rental? If it were on the market today for $468,000, would I buy this specific property for $468,000 today as a rental, or is there something that is more compelling?

It may be that in your area, there is a property that you could buy for $468,000 that would be more compelling as a rental. And if so, you should always think about getting rid of bad rentals and buying better rentals. So most real estate investors who have a large portfolio of properties have a few that – this property just doesn't do that great.

It doesn't rent very easily. It's a little awkward or something like that, and they trade those properties out when they have an opportunity and to sell them and go to somewhere else. And so that's the first question you should ask. The second question you should ask would involve some sense of market timing.

You look at your local market and you ask yourself, is this a good time for me to be selling a piece of property, taking some profits? Is there something that might change in the local market? Or is this a good time where, no, I definitely want to keep it because things could change in the future?

I'm not going to even open my mouth on that because you have a DC area code phone number, and it just seems like everything in DC just continues to go up. But you make your own assessment of that. Number three is then the tax consideration. So you have an opportunity to reset and to go from a $235,000 tax basis, and let's say you sell the property for $468,000, and let's say you clear $415,000 or $420,000, whatever it winds up being.

So let's just call it for easy math. Let's say you clear $200,000 tax-free. Would you rather take advantage of this factor to take your $200,000 tax-free, or is there some compelling reason why you wouldn't want to take the $200,000 tax-free? Compelling reasons why you wouldn't would be things like, this house is fantastic.

I know that everything on this house is fixed. I know that there's not a bit of cost that's going to come out of it. But I don't necessarily know that about some other place, or just things like that. Once this three years passes, yeah, you're going to lose the chance to access the money tax-free.

And in the future, you would have to pay capital gains taxes. And so in general, the bias, especially when you've got $200,000-something of gain, general the bias would be take your tax-free gain. And even if you turn around and you sell this property, and you buy literally the property next door, at least you get a step-up in basis, and you restart with a $468,000 tax basis, and you've taken your tax-free gain from moving from the property.

But those are the three factors, and then you would just have to decide how to weight them based upon the individual circumstances of this particular house, as compared to alternative houses, this particular market, as compared to the future, and then the value of that tax-free gain now, versus something inherent to the property itself.

I see. And so let me ask, does this impact your advice as well? So I mean, we're not really investors at all. We just happen to buy a new home. Our agent said, "Hey, your mortgage is only $2,800, and you can rent for $2,800." And we're like, "Oh, okay, well, let's move forward with that." So we're not heavy investors and real estate enthusiasts in that sense.

Given that information, does that impact any of the advice you've given? It's good to acquire and keep assets. The people who tend to be the wealthiest in the long-term are those who just buy assets and hold them forever. So if you wind up in a situation where you've bought this asset and you own it, your wealth will probably be the greatest in the long-term if you just keep it.

For example, you probably have a very low mortgage interest rate because you bought this property when interest rates were low. And so you can just sit here with this property, and the tenant will pay it off for you, and you'll have that for the rest of your life. But if you sell it today, and you're not really real estate people, then there's a good chance that you're going to wind up spending the gain or putting it in something else that may not be – and you may not save it.

So it's hard for me to answer because it's a personalized thing, as always. If you're going to take the money from the sale of the property, and you're going to consume it instead of investing it, then you would be better off just keeping this property so that the money is not consumed, even though in the future, you'll probably wind up paying a little bit more long-term capital gains tax.

And so what you said, "We're not really real estate people," then in general, I would say you're probably going to be richer in the long run if you don't sell it, you just keep it, let the property management people manage it, and because you're just acquiring an asset and keeping it and not consuming it, then you'll probably be wealthier in the long run because of it.

But that's the framework, is are you going to consume it or not? If you – this is a convenient way to do it. There's a lot of people out there who don't mind owning a few properties, who wouldn't go out and buy a rental property, but they don't mind accumulating a few.

And since it's so easy, you occupied the property with traditional financing, you've already got a mortgage locked in, you don't need to do anything, then based upon what you said, my bias would be to say, "Just keep it, let the tenant pay off the mortgage for you, and in the future, when that's done, you'll have a very valuable asset, it'll continue to increase in value, as long as you don't get too much trouble from the tenants, it's reasonable, the property management company is doing a good job, you'll probably be happier to just keep it and let the asset continue to accumulate rather than selling it and having to face the risk of, "What do I spend the money on?

Do I consume it? And also, what do I invest it in?" And you probably don't want to go out and find another house. So this is one of those behavioral finance things where there's a technical answer, which is kind of what I gave you, but there's also just the behavioral answer, which is to say, "It's always better to acquire assets and keep them for the long term than it is to be shuffling things around." Understood.

Understood. Do I have time for another question? Sure. Go ahead. And so with that, in keeping it, I've been looking at LLC or land trust, and is there any benefit if we're going to keep it to start looking at those or one of those or something else to go for protection, I guess it would be?

No. In my opinion, no. Okay. No. So the answer to an LLC is if you – so there are technical reasons such as ease of transfer or something like that that you want to transfer the LLC. People promote LLCs as a significant form of asset protection. I'm pretty ambivalent about whether it's actually effective or not, or even necessary.

If you're talking about you own a house and a rental property, I don't think that's in any way necessary. And it seems to me that it's more of a benefit to the lawyer who's drawing up the LLC than it's likely to be for you. I mean, I'm just – I love the topics of asset protection and whatnot.

I'm just so deeply skeptical of so much of it that chances are if you do – and you have to – by the way, you have to do things properly. And if you do things properly, the idea of you going out and setting up an LLC just – what's the point?

What does doing it properly mean? Well, make sure the house is in good condition, that it's up to code, that everything's working in it. You're not going to have some electrical fire because you did something stupid and didn't follow the code. Make sure you've got proper management in place, and then make sure you have proper insurance in place.

But you just generally don't need to ever do anything beyond good insurance in order to be protected. That's why you have insurance. And so when you go and start setting up LLCs and whatnot, it's expensive to set them up. It's expensive to maintain them, especially for someone like you who's not doing them and not in the business yourself, doesn't have already the relationships established.

And the protection that they offer, I think, is quite modest. And if you have one, first thing that's going to happen if you get sued is the LLC is going to get sued and you're going to get sued. And then in terms of setting it up in a land trust, I think the biggest benefit of a land trust is regarding privacy.

But at this point in time, you have no privacy because you already owned it. And so what's the point of transferring it from a house to a trust when you were clearly on the deed as the previous owner? So no, I wouldn't bother with any of that stuff from what you're describing to me so far.

Truly appreciate it, Joshua. Thank you so much. My pleasure. We go to Nevada to Blair. Blair, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey, Josh. How are you doing today? Blair Wilson. How are you? Doing great. Thanks for taking my call. I had maybe two quick questions if you have the time for it.

First one is around the idea of financial minimalism. I'm getting fatigued with modern society, how I've got multiple bank accounts now, different retirement vehicles, different custodians, different credit cards. And I think about the fact that if I were to pass today, I would hate for somebody to deal with all of this stuff.

And I get nervous, obviously, about having everything consolidated under one roof for one vendor. But any approaches you've taken, I've heard you talk in the past that, you know, when I die, I'd love to have a twin bed in my child's house and, you know, go out easy. But any thoughts on how to approach this logically?

Yeah. I can't, in good faith, suggest extreme minimalism on something so important as banking. I can't. Like, I have had so many bank accounts flagged just for stupid things and I can't access my money that the idea of having one bank account makes me just like wake up in shivers.

Now, I don't think that's necessarily for everyone, but I do think that having multiple banks and multiple bank accounts is really important. Just for mundane things, you know, again, fraud, fraud alerts, travel alerts, they don't take this particular brand of card or there's an issue in the computer glitch and, you know, Bank of America can't process, what was the issue a couple of weeks ago, they can't process deposits, things like that.

I'm probably really sensitive to this due to my internationally oriented lifestyle, but I still think it's a significant ongoing thing for most people and you got to be careful of it. If you had it, just imagine you had all your money in one checking account and you use a debit card somewhere and then somebody fraudulently charges your debit card and wipes out your main account and yes, of course, you'll eventually be able to get that money back because it was fraudulent and it's protected by the guarantees, but in the meantime, everything else in your structure falls apart.

So I don't think that the goal should be to just have one bank account for most of us. And so how many is too many? Well, it would depend on circumstances. It's kind of silly, but my answer to that is the rule of three. So two is one, one is none, three is for me.

That's what I say. Two is one, one is none, three is for me. I have a podcast on it. You can go back and find it. And then what I want to do is I want to say two is one, one is none, three is for me, and I want complementary redundancy.

And so what I try to do in every area is I try to choose three things that are complementary and that are redundant, but have different features. So for banking, I would like to have one banking relationship with a large national bank, one of the big monster mega banks that has ATMs everywhere, etc.

I would like to have one banking relationship with a small local credit union that can be near my house or can be on the other side of the country. And then the third one, we can fill it in with a couple of things. So if I have a banking relationship with a large monster mega bank and I have a small local credit union, then the third bank that I might fill in might be a small local or regional bank on the other side of the country.

I would do that. So I have a little bit of privacy around that particular account if someone's doing an asset search on me or something like that. I might choose an account that has more features. So let's say we would choose an online bank account where I get a higher interest rate or easy to set up multiple accounts for my bookkeeping, things like that.

I might choose a bank that gives me something like fee-free international ATM card distributions. So I might choose one of the banks that offers that and refunds all my fees. So I'm looking just for what's a feature that I don't have in my first two banks so that they're different.

And I have a reason to have all three of them. It's not just to have to have three. I think it's stupid. No, it's too stupid. I shouldn't use that word. I think it's not like what's the point of having an account at Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Chase unless they're all the same.

It doesn't matter. Pick one and then supplement with something else. Again, supplement with the credit union. Supplement with the Charles Schwab checking account that gives you international fee-free transfers, things like that. And then so to me, that makes sense. You judge it for yourself, but to me, that makes sense.

Now, you can have a simple lifestyle set up with that, but having three bank accounts is not a problem create for your executor. It's three bank accounts. Three accounts. Here's a notice of so-and-so's death or I've got to do this thing with his accounts. Here's my power of attorney, et cetera.

You'll probably have one primary account that you use, and then you'll set up some structure where your income will flow into this account and it'll be dispersed in a simple way. Same thing with investment accounts. So investment accounts, you want them to be as simple as possible, but not so simple that you miss out on something that's important to you.

Now, just like with banks, we're going to have FDIC insurance, with investment accounts, we're going to have CIFIC insurance. So I don't get too worried if somebody has one large investment account and everything's in one place, especially if it's with a good provider, et cetera. There is insurance, et cetera.

But to have everything in one place, even though regulators and whatnot do a pretty good job of watching out for fraud and things like that, just imagine having your life savings in one institution, and that institution goes belly up, somebody commits fraud, et cetera. Even if you're legally protected in the long run, to sit back and wait for a court case and wait for a representative of the court, a trustee, to go through and release your funds and things like that from one institution, to me, that's just an unacceptable risk.

And so we want to have at least two or three accounts. And so probably something like an 80/20 approach is right, that we'll have 80% of our money with our primary account. Our primary, it might be your 401(k) or it might be someplace you keep an IRA, but let's go ahead and just keep 20% in somewhere else.

And so look for two is one, one is none, three is for me, and look for complementary redundancy. And so look for a platform if you're custodianing, if you're seeking a new custodian for investment accounts, look for a platform that offers you better trading services or lower fees or better transfers or a nice checking account attached, et cetera.

And look for just some way to set it up that makes sense to you. That would be my thought. Where I think simplicity is really excellent, though, and where it really matters is not the number of accounts, but rather the daily structure. And so I'm an advocate for some people of things like tracking their money, budgeting, et cetera.

But I often actually tell people to stop worrying so much about it. And so it's not uncommon for me in private consultations to talk with someone and to say, listen, let's set up some simple rules. Simple rule number one is you set up an automatic contribution into your employer-sponsored retirement plans, and you max them out every single year, no matter what.

So the beauty of that is simply that if you do that, you're going to be rich, done. Simple rule number two is that you put 80% of your remaining check into a checking account, 20% goes to a savings account at a different bank. Simple rule number three is you never borrow money.

And if you do that, you probably don't have that many expenses. And so someone who's in a situation like that I don't think needs to engage in complicated financial tracking, et cetera. Just pull up in your checking account and see if you have money. And if you have money, spend it.

If you don't have money, then don't spend it. And if you mess something up and there's a bill or something that's going to bounce, then have that savings account there where it just automatically pulls from that and then recognize, hey, I need to stop spending money because I just had to have an overdraft protection from the savings account to pay my electricity bill or something like that.

I think that works fine if you set it up in advance and if you know I'm investing, I don't borrow money, and have some simple rules. And to me, that's what a lot of us really want with regard to simplicity. It's not that it's burdensome to have too many accounts.

It's rather that it's burdensome to spend hours a week trying to track every $0.37 transaction. And so let's set up some kind of simple financial system that allows you to systematically just spend money on the things that you want to spend money and know that you're totally fine to do that because you've taken care of the important things first.

No, that's great. I appreciate the philosophy on that and really great insight. I appreciate that. Good. You had a second question? Yeah, just real quick. I know you've hit on this in the past and I couldn't find when, but I consume way too much content. And I remember you saying, making a comment about if you're pressed for time or if you're prioritizing things, it's better to, your approach would be to listen to books versus listen to podcasts.

And I wondered if you could just unpack that again real quick. Yeah, absolutely. When I create a podcast, I generally am talking mostly extemporaneously off of something that has been on my mind for a while. It's not fair to say that I sit down and just hit record. That's not true at all.

I spend hours and hours and hours and hours thinking about a podcast topic when I do a podcast, but generally speaking, my preparation to record a podcast is somewhere between zero to 20 minutes of kind of jotting some notes down, something like that. I'm a skilled speaker. Most of the time I can stay on track.

Most of the time I can deliver what I want to deliver. A lot of times, I'll hit record, I'll get five minutes in and I'll say, "Nah, I'm going to stop. I'm going to pivot and start again," and do something like that. But at the end of the day, I think most podcasters, let's say you listen to an hour podcast, the podcaster is drawing on his life experience, his just thinking about subjects generally speaking, and about an hour of preparation for an hour of content.

That's a pretty low ratio of pithiness for a podcast. I might be underselling it because the pithiness comes from all the other stuff. For example, I just gave you a speech extemporaneously with zero preparation, but that speech about your question about financial minimalism, I've been thinking about that for years and years and years.

It's unfair to say that there was no preparation for it. There was a lot of preparation for it, but in terms of my delivery of it, I didn't have the examples planned out. That's just all extemporaneous speaking of me trying to identify good or useful examples. The pithiness of a podcast is much lower than a book or a magazine article or a journal article in terms of preparation.

When someone writes a book, then generally speaking, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours spent writing the content. The process of writing naturally distills your thoughts to the essence of the content. You edit yourself when you're writing to make sure that you're being as clear as possible.

Then normally, prior to writing, minimum, you're spending hundreds of hours of focus targeted research, and in many cases, thousands of hours of focus targeted research. That research is generally of a much more scholarly nature than a quick web search for an article to spark a podcaster's thinking. You're spending time understanding the books that have been written on this topic that you're writing a book on, and then those authors before you have done that process as well.

The research that you do preparing for a book represents thousands and thousands and thousands of man hours for, in many cases, at least decades, and most of the time, centuries or perhaps even millennia. In many cases, many books, many subjects, we're reaching back 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 years, and we're tracing that thinking process up to today in order to talk about what we're doing.

That doesn't happen in podcasts generally. In terms of sheer bang for the buck of pithiness and insights and carefully considered thoughts and careful research, an audio book blows every podcast in the world out of the water. So what's the point of a podcast? Well, a podcast really shines with bringing thinking current and giving specific application.

That's where podcasts are fantastic. When you write a book, because the creation and editing process is so involved that it's always necessarily out of date. Even if the author is doing everything he can to get it done, a professionally published and recorded book is six months, 12 months out of date at the fastest it could possibly be done.

And so when you have a podcast episode with an author, for example, what you give up in terms of clarity or pithiness of content, you gain back in terms of current cutting edge insight into a current situation. You also gain it in terms of topic application. And so the ability to take something that doesn't fit the carefully edited nature of a book and talk about it on an ad hoc basis, that's where a podcast really shines.

Because due to the intense editing process of the book, that in and of itself makes it so pithy, it automatically culls out the number of topics that an author will write about to just what fits the thesis of the book and just what he can support in terms of evidence and research and good arguments, etc.

But a podcast is not that way. If a guy pulls out a microphone or pulls out his phone and just shoots something, he may just have seven minutes of content, but it's seven minutes of interesting content. And because he feels good about the ephemeral nature of the podcast or the YouTube or whatever the current thing is, it's ephemeral content.

And so he doesn't have to go and prove this out with 15 cited resources. And if all he has to say is seven minutes, that's all he has to say. So as I see it, there's a great balance here that should be achieved. And it's not that you should only choose one or the other, but that you should be thoughtful about why you're consuming the content and then making sure that you're consuming content that's feeding you.

I don't think 80% of our listening should be YouTube or podcasts. I think maybe it's not 80% books, but I think at least 50% should be books. Because the medium creates the message and the kind of person who consumes books is going to be forced, like it or not, to be a deeper, more thoughtful person.

Someone who thinks more critically, who thinks on a deeper level, and who has a wider degree of exposure than someone who listens to podcasts or YouTube. But if the person only consumes books, they may be missing out on the group conversation and also on the current application of it.

I guess that would be the other thing I should have pointed out with regards to a podcast. Writing is hard. Writing is really hard. And good writing is really hard. Publishing is really hard. Shooting a YouTube video, not so hard. And so I think there are a lot of people who would never be writers who can create other forms of content.

And because they're creating something useful in that format, but because they're good thinkers, then we should go and pursue them for their thinking ability and other kinds of people who don't write the books. So I think a balance is warranted, but it shouldn't just be all podcasts. And if we really want to master a domain, there is no better path, no faster path, and truly no other possible path than mastering the books that form the core canon of that domain.

And then once those books are mastered, we can put on the beautiful frosting of current exposure with all of the other stuff. But without the books, it's very hard to be a deep and skilled thinker in a topic just from listening to YouTube or podcasts. Awesome. That's exactly what I wanted you to articulate, so thank you for adding that value.

And Merry Christmas to you and your family, Josh. Appreciate all you do. And to you and yours. We go to the great state of Kansas. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? How to crush your performance review with Postmates. It's time to quadshot Americano out of bed, because this week, you're going to come in hot, piping hot, boldly businessing like it's nobody's business.

What's that? Imposter syndrome? Man, you'll punch it in the face, because those gifts you added to the presentation do make an impact that your boss does recognize. Get coffee on Postmates. For $30 off your first three orders or $35 or more, use code LA30. Terms apply. Hey, Joshua. Thank you for taking the call.

Got a question about paper. I know you've been traveling a lot and have been for a while, and you're out of the U.S. and all that good stuff. I was wondering what your approach is to paper documents, important documents. Do you just make everything digital? Do you have a system?

Have you ever given any thought to that? I'm trying to reduce a lot of clutter and stuff in the house and just want to know what your thoughts are on that. Yes. I've given it a lot of thought, and I have done a lot of different things. Be more specific with the clutter or the paper that is annoying you.

What do you want to reduce and get rid of? Well, we try to go paperless with a lot of the bills and just normal stuff that comes in the mail. So we've reduced a lot of that, but I don't really know what to do with some things like auto records or even some artwork from the kid's school.

The random things that you just think, "I might need this someday." I don't know if I just inherited this from my parents or something, but I don't really have a good way to think about what to keep and how to keep it, and if digitizing it is really any better than storing it in a file cabinet.

Right. It's a complex subject that could go different ways, but I'll give you some of my experiences and hopefully those will inform you. First, I don't think that stuff, including paper, is generally bothersome in and of itself. It's disorganized stuff that is generally bothersome. So I would ask, can you begin by simply organizing your things a little bit better and set up an organizational system that will work for you?

I don't think pursuing a 100% paperless system is smart or advisable, even though in many cases it's technically possible. And so we all need some kind of organization system that works. For paper, the key is some kind of file drawer or file box or file cabinet or file bag, a set of manila folders, and a labeler.

Do you own a labeler? Yes, we do, actually. Perfect. Labeler is life-changing. And so you should give yourself full freedom to label things quickly and freely and just do it. And having your paper organized is going to be the first step. So even if you were to digitize it, you first need to organize it.

So the organization system is file folders and a file cabinet or file box, etc. And it's pretty easy to do that and worth doing. It's necessary to do that if you're going to digitize. The only reason you wouldn't want to just keep that system would be if there were some compelling reason why you needed to digitize.

So when I was going traveling full time, I digitized everything. I digitized a 2,000 book library. I did destructive scanning. I chopped off the spines of all my books. I bought a fancy duplex scanner, and I scanned all my books, and I got rid of everything, every book. I digitized all my papers.

I digitized all my old journals. I chopped up my yearbooks and digitized those, and I got rid of everything. I regret some of that stuff, specifically because digital files have their own issues. So I backed some of my journals, right? I had 10 years of personal journals. I digitized them all.

I was worried a little bit about it from a privacy perspective. I was like, "I'll just go ahead and digitize these things." So I digitized them, and I shredded them. Well then I put them on a computer system, and because they were important to me, I encrypted them. I password protected them.

I backed them up on an encrypted disk, and that encrypted disk, I can't get into it because I forgot my password. Now that's a stupid, stupid thing to do. Eventually I'll find a copy of them, and I probably have them a few backups, but it's an example. In theory, I should be smart, right?

In theory, I should know what I'm doing. At the time, I used this password every day. I had it all squared away, and I said, "There's no chance of my forgetting this." But then I went on, did something else, and I came back some months later, and I couldn't reproduce the password.

So that was frustrating, but again, it's not the end of the world, but it's frustrating. So here I am. I should know what I'm doing, and I make a stupid mistake like that. I've worked with clients. I have a client that lost a few million dollars' worth of Bitcoin on a drive that was backed up with a password and can't come up with a password.

He's tried to crack it, et cetera. It's gone. So digital things have their own danger, and it's not the perfect solution. So start with organization. That's step one. Things that have a low cost can just be gotten rid of right there. So if you have bills, paper bills or something that comes in, most of that stuff doesn't need any kind of filing or organization.

It needs to be shredded, and most of that stuff should be digitized. So I think the simplest way to do that, to digitize those kinds of things, is to set up obviously an account, and if you're going to have email, then I would just set up a separate email account that is exclusively for this.

It should probably be an account like ProtonMail or other encrypted email service. Just have everything go there, and you only log into it when you need to go and check a statement or something. So there's no point in having paper coming in for that stuff. Paper is a significant identity theft risk problem.

It is much better for you to have monthly statements and things like that delivered digitally due to the identity theft risks of having those documents sitting in your mailbox. So I think that makes a lot of sense. When it comes to records, educational records, things like that, it's not that burdensome to have a file folder for each child.

I think they should be digitized in case they're lost, but they should also be kept as hard copy in case the digital file gets corrupted. There's not any reason why you shouldn't have a couple of boxes of important papers in your life, even if they're stored off-site or something like that.

We can do that. And there are good reasons to need and want those things that you may not perceive now. I'll give two examples from my own life. This is unique to me with my internationalization and stuff, but first of all, I have children who have been born outside of the United States.

And if those children ever want to pass along citizenship, U.S. citizenship to their children, and if they were married to – I won't go into all the details – but they need to demonstrate that they have lived in the United States prior to a certain age. And so if they don't have physical copies of that to be able to demonstrate at a certain time, then something extremely valuable like a citizenship could be lost.

This happened a number of years ago when I was interacting with something for one of my wife's things, and we needed to come up with documentation of her maiden name. And if we didn't have copies of her passports, copies of her old driver's license and things like that of her maiden name, then it would have been troublesome.

Things like old driver's licenses that have your address on them, a lot of times you need to verify for a credit check system now. Who did you reside at 123 Maple Street? And you get four addresses deep, and it's hard to remember what was my address at that point in time.

But you've got to fill out 10 years of address history or something like that. And so having hard copy records of that stuff is really important. Things like Social Security cards, identity documents, obviously last wills and testaments, statements of deeds, etc. That stuff all needs to be kept, and it needs to be kept for the long term.

It should be digitized as a backup in case your house burns down, but it shouldn't be gotten rid of. It should be maintained. So I would say organization solves a lot of the frustration that people have with stuff. And organization will help you to diminish stuff in general. And I think the best solution for most organizing stuff is a system of files and boxes.

And so for paper, files and boxes is good. For other stuff too, I myself, I use Ziploc bags, gallon bags, or I use a lot of clear transparent bags. Like for example, if you buy a set of sheets or pillowcases, things like that, it comes in these little just clears, I save all those things.

And I use them to organize things that are like. And so I label everything. And if you just have a bag or a folder and it's labeled, and you put something in it, even if it's one simple thing, then you now know this thing belongs and I have it.

I'll give you an example. I have a trampoline for my children. And if you've ever set up one of these trampolines, you know that you need a trampoline spring tool in order to put those springs on and off. And if you don't have this tool, it's a nightmare to put these springs on and off.

But if you have the tool, it's easy. So when I bought the trampoline, I had this trampoline spring tool. I don't want to lose this. I take the trampoline spring tool, I put it into a gallon size Ziploc bag. It's clear. I know what's in it. I fold it closed.

I take my label maker and I put on it trampoline spring tool and I put a label on the bag and I put it in my stack of my shelves or in some cases I've used bins, boxes, et cetera, and I just toss it in there. And so sometimes when I'm looking for something, I go in and I just pull everything out.

Because everything's bagged, it's all filed in a sense, it's labeled, et cetera, then I know like these are things that I've intentionally kept and it's a lot more like I don't have any angst about it like I would if it were just sitting on a random shelf in a workshop or something like that.

And so same thing with paper. You do need the paper and it would be only certain people who would ever want to get rid of that stuff. And one final comment. I think I have most of the paperless solutions. I have several scanners. I have a duplex scanner. I also have an overhead book scanner now.

It doesn't work well, but I have it. I have all the devices. I have all the files swapping around. I have it pretty well synchronized, et cetera. I think we overestimate the value and the pleasure of using those things. And so simple things like books. I regret digitizing my entire library.

I did a podcast episode on it. I regret digitizing my entire library. I wish I had taken about a third of those books and just put them in storage because I've had to go back and buy some of them again because I want the hard copy. With my children and their education, I buy all of their books even though a lot of times they're totally free on Kindle and I can just put them on their e-reader on their Kindle device.

But our brains work better with placement. And for things that are actually important, especially learning things, the sense of location, our brains are designed to locate objects. And so having a location on a page or a location in a book, a physical tangible book, is a really important and powerful learning tool when compared to having everything digital.

You cannot remember things as effectively when they're presented to you digitally as when they are physical. And then even the best systems have trouble. I have been trying for three years to find a book in my library, in my electronic library. Years ago I bought this book and it was full of – it had these just wonderful financial stories and parables.

It was – I read it aloud to my wife at the breakfast table and it was fantastic. I loved the book. I digitized it along with all of my other books. I know it's in my library. I have a Caliber library, it has 5,000 books on it. I know it's there.

But search as I might, I cannot remember the author, I can't remember the name, I cannot find this book in my library. At some point I have to go through and just sit there and go through every single one of my 5,000 books and find them. But it's very frustrating to me because there have been many times where I've wanted to create a podcast episode and I can't find it.

And I want to go to that book and read one of the stories and use it as inspiration to create a podcast episode but I don't have it and I can't lay my hands on it. And so there's real value in having physical objects, physical books, et cetera. There's also real value in having digital stuff.

A lot of times when I'm creating a podcast, the fact that I can go to my computer and I can pull up any paper, any book, et cetera, and I remember where most of the stuff is, is in and of itself very valuable. So I'm going to stop there and I'm just going to say that going digital is useful but don't go too digital.

If you go digital, keep the important hard copy stuff and create a filing system that makes that work because there's a decent chance that 50 years from now some of that stuff will be needed. And physical objects are much more permanent for your child to demonstrate his American ancestry or something like that when he's off living in France so that his kid can get U.S.

citizenship. That stuff, those important physical things are much more important than, "Oh, we've got all that sitting on this device over here." There are also very compelling benefits to having digital stuff but you need to be super careful and don't go there too quickly because I think my story of forgetting my password for all the scans of all of my journals and things like that, my story is more common than uncommon.

And we have to learn how to do a better job with our digital management especially when everything's upgrading. So is that helpful at all? Yes. Yes. I actually have had a similar, well actually I had a drive fail before I got a chance to back it up and so I've lost a few digital things in my day as well.

But your framework about organization, I guess step one is to just kind of put things in perspective because I think that'll help out a lot. One quick question, like a follow-up question if I may, on some of the important things. Do you have any recommendation, especially if you're traveling, what documents or what you would carry them in or take them in just to kind of keep those things secure like Social Security cards or birth certificates and stuff like that?

In general I try not to travel with things like that. So something like Social Security cards specifically, there's zero reason why you would ever need a Social Security card abroad. Now birth certificates on the other hand, I do often travel with them, especially if I'm going somewhere to do an immigration program or something like that, I do often travel with those.

I use, specifically I use a bag that's made by Eagle Creek, is the manufacturer. Eagle Creek makes a lot of bags and travel products. They have a, is it Eagle Creek Packet, I'll give you the specific. I think it's called Eagle Creek Packet Folder and they have three sizes and the nice thing about them is, I used to know this brand name off the top of my head, the nice thing about them is they are, I'll come up with it in a moment, it's Eagle Creek bag and they have three different sets.

It's from their Packet Cube line, but they're not packing cubes, they are, here we go, Eagle Creek Packet, okay, so evidently it was the brand name, Eagle Creek Packet Organizer Bags. So Eagle Creek Packet, P-A-C-K-I-T Organizer Bags. They have small, medium, large and what's nice about them is they are made of a mesh material and then inside of the mesh they have a plastic, like a P-U-L liner, a plastic liner inside.

Now that liner does eventually break down, but that protects it from water damage and the large size is perfect for documents. You can fit into it all your documents, slide it in your bag, it's perfect for documents and so I use it for documents and they come in red, blue and black and I have all the different colors and I use those usually.

I also just use a gallon size Ziploc bag. If you use a gallon size Ziploc bag, you can fit into that an eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper, you have to just kind of put it down just a tiny bit to zip the bag and then it'll stretch itself out.

So the way that I organize stuff, being mobile actually, I don't have a filing cabinet. What I do is I have all of my family documents organized in Ziploc bags. So I have one for me, I have one for my wife and for each of my children and any document that pertains to the person goes into the Ziploc bag.

Everything's labeled and then I put all of those Ziploc bags inside one of these Eagle Creek packet bags, the large size and it's bright red and it's in with my safe and so if I need to leave the house, that's what I'm grabbing. It's red, it's ready to go and if there's a fire or I have to evacuate or something like that, that's the bag that I take and it has everything ready to go and it's all organized, it has my dog's vaccine records, it has all the social security cards for the children, it has anything that is document related so that if I had to go and leave in the middle of the night, I have the bag of records and I grab that and go.

And so that's what I do is I use those Eagle Creek bags and Ziploc bags as the primary organization method. And I really like that because file cabinets have their place but the scenario that I'm describing is in some cases more likely than needing it in another case and so I want to be able to grab a bag and in that bag and I'm a prepper and I'm also like this international prepper.

So I have basically like seven copies of each of my family's birth certificates, three of them are apostilled, four of them are not. I've got notarized copies of my marriage records, I've got everything there ready to go because of my international experience where I was found wanting and I've got fingerprint cards done from my wife and me ready to go and then I also keep a whole backup set of that stuff in another country.

And so if my house did burn down then I would call someone else. So back to your traveling question, so that's what I use to carry the stuff but in general you don't want to carry too much of the stuff because paper is simultaneously a benefit and also a downside and so what I have is I have a password system.

All of my documents, all my credit cards, my driver's licenses, my passports, everything like that, all of that stuff I have digitized and then backed up in an encrypted system with a password so that even if everything is stolen from me, like if my phone is stolen, my bag is stolen, my passport is stolen, etc.

all I need is access to a computer, it can be anyone's computer, it can be anyone's computer, it can be an internet cafe, etc., public computer, all I need is access to a computer and I can go gain access to my documents and I can print whatever I need to demonstrate my identity.

So years ago I had my passport stolen, I had to go to the US embassy and I had to get a new passport and I learned at that moment that if you can't prove your identity it takes a really long time to get this handled. If you can demonstrate your identity though, you can get it done pretty quickly and so this is of course accessible on all my digital devices so if I have my phone and my passport gets stolen I can just pull out my phone and look here's a copy of the passport so that the consulate will give me an emergency passport to get me home but then I also have it set up so that I can access it from any computer regardless of whether it's my phone or not and that's what I would recommend is that the most important thing with traveling is to have basically one backup with you.

We used to, all the travel gurus used to recommend having a paper copy, I think that still makes sense and again depending on the trip. So when I do an overland trip across borders internationally I do a couple things. Number one is you always need a stack of copies with you and this is where, forgive the long answer, hopefully it's at least a little interesting.

If you're going to Europe for two weeks and you're flying from New York to Paris, you don't need much of this stuff because it's super simple, you just need a passport and if you have a picture of it on your phone or if you have one paper copy of it that's all you're going to need.

On the other hand if you're traveling with a vehicle across borders at every single border, well depending on where you are, not everyone, but a lot of times you need to have multiple copies of your vehicle ownership documents, your passport, your driver's license, your insurance information and you've got to have all of them and a lot of times you'll go across a border and they'll keep one of your documents at both sides and so now you've got eight pieces of paper that slides away at every document.

And sometimes it can be very hectic depending on the border and so what I do in those cases is I make color copies of the originals and then I never give them the original unless they figure out that it's the color copy. And so that's a useful strategy and in countries where you're required to have your passport on you, then and it's quite literally the law, but you don't want to take the risk of carrying the passport, then you go ahead and make a high quality color copy, laminate it and then basically just plead ignorance about the actual law.

So that way you're probably close enough to being legal without actually having your passport in your pocket the whole time. And I've never had any trouble with that. So you can say, look, here's a copy of my passport and make it a nice color copy that clearly it's the passport and if we go back to my hotel, back at the hotel safe, there's my original version.

So that's how I do it. I use the Eagle Creek packet organizer bags, the large size is perfect for papers. I use a Ziploc bags to keep things organized inside of that. And then based upon the country that you're traveling to, you and the mode of transportation, that's where you may need more of those copies and things like that, or you may just it's not necessary at all.

There's my answer. Perfect. Thank you. You're the perfect guy to answer that question, so that's what I wanted to call it. Thank you, Joshua. My pleasure. You know, you do enough international stuff, all the, like I recommend to people, I teach this in my international skate plan course, like get your multiple, get your birth certificates, get your school records.

I have, and I've just learned like all that stuff is important. So you can add that to your prepping. I have a sealed version, a sealed copy of college transcripts, high school transcripts, like everything is done away because I have needed it and not had it. And so I resolved, I better make sure that I have this next time.

Kyle in Washington. Welcome to the show. Have a great day. Hi there. Gabriel Custodio's first episode of his podcast is also a good starting point when you're trying to figure out what to throw away and what to keep, although he is a fairly minimal type of guy, not to discount the last 20 minutes of you talking.

So that's just for the uninitiated. It's called Watchman Privacy and you can find it. He has it on YouTube and all the podcast feeds. So find the Watchman Privacy Podcast, great podcast anyway, and go back and find episode one and hear his take on that. Yeah. In 15 minutes, he'll give you hours and hours of stuff to do.

That's always how it is. Yeah. I have a radical Christian father's question. So one thing I'm noticing at my church and other churches in this area in which I live where there are a lot of small church communities is they, I find myself connecting, connecting is the wrong word.

I find myself relating to and having more in common with the women at the church because they are the ones leading their families and it's frustrating me to find the type of fellowship that I'm looking for in these groups of men because they seem to be following their wives and not the other way around.

And I'm just curious, I'm assuming you run into that. You push that an awful lot when you did that podcast and I'm curious if you have any kind of, you know, me going and preaching to all these guys and saying, you guys are doing it wrong. I'm not going to make any friends that way and I'm not sure how to go about working around this difficulty I'm experiencing.

Is there a particular denominational tradition that you yourself are involved in where you're finding this more than in another place? No, I go to a Catholic church and I went to, when I started back going, I went to pretty much every church that was within a half an hour of me.

And I didn't stay long enough to say that this is definitive, but I see the women run a lot of the church operations. There are a few men that volunteer, typically older, retired gentlemen, but the guys with kids that are my age just aren't. And I felt as though I saw it as a general rule, don't get me wrong, there are exceptions just like I'm the exception in my mind, but I'm not seeing it any different if I go to, you know, a non-denominational church or however you want it to be called versus the one that I'm currently a member in.

Right, well, it is, I can certainly easily understand what you're saying. It is a continual problem. It's not a problem everywhere though, but the reasoning strikes right at the heart of where we are as a culture and it's basically largely due to the cultural revolution in the United States and in many places of the various waves of feminism and it goes all the way back to the first part of the 20th century.

But the responses to this change and vary depending on where you go and what you're exposed to, etc. And so there are, if you want to see more stronger men who are patriarchs of their family, there's a lot of us out there and in the future there will be a lot more, but there has been an enormous sifting happening.

So I'll just tell my story briefly. Today I clearly and wholeheartedly identify with patriarchy, but it was not always that way. I grew up in a fairly conservative Christian world where male leadership was emphasized, but because of the cultural play, the cultural pressure in the wake of the feminist revolution, egalitarianism, etc., I was never super comfortable with that strong male approach.

Specifically I remember one time when I was in college, and I wasn't a hardcore lefty or anything, but this pressure was really strong, including in Christian circles. And I remember I was in college one time and I went to my dad and I specifically rebuked my dad for some of his language, because instead of using gender-inclusive language, he had this thing that he said, and I'll skip the details, but he had this thing that he said that was specifically very exclusive.

It was not gender-inclusive. And I said, "Dad, why do you have to say it that way? Why can't you say it in the more inclusive way?" And he wasn't offended, I don't even remember what he said, but anyway, years later I went back to him and I said, "Dad, you know what?

You were completely right." And I was a fool for thinking of it, but it took me a decade to get there. It took me a decade of watching, it took me a decade of experience, it took me a decade. So specifically let's briefly touch on Christian doctrine. There are three basic views that we can categorize, that we can lump in together Christian views on male and female dynamics, and I think this would be a proper categorization that would include the vast majority.

And you'll find many Christians in each of these three categories. So the first category is egalitarianism, and egalitarianism would say that there is no real difference between men and women, and therefore men and women can do all of the same things, men and women have all the same functions, there's no difference.

After all, the Bible says there is now no more male and female, no more Jew and Greek, so therefore we're all the same, and that would be the egalitarian position. This would be very common in many specific Christian traditions, and I'll get to the causal factors of this in a moment, but most of the mainline Protestant denominations would have this position.

Roman Catholicism is unique because you have from the top level, you do not have this at all, but there are strong elements within Roman Catholicism to see this change. The Anglican Church is now basically totally egalitarian, and so you go many places and you find women pastors and women everything, this, that, and the others.

That's the egalitarian position. Then you have the complementarian position. The complementarian position, as best I can come out, as best I can figure it out, came out really in about the – that term started to be used – and by the way, to be clear, I'm no historical theologian, so if I'm wrong on this, this is just my best understanding at the moment – but that really came out in about the 1980s and 1990s, when you had a strong liberalizing influence from the mainline Christian denominations against broader evangelical Christianity.

And again, remember the cultural context of this. We go all the way back to women's suffrage with the 13th Amendment in the United States, all of the first wave feminism, second wave feminism, all the way through, the strong feminist cultural movement invaded the Christian Church to a strong degree.

And so that was where you started to have a lot of the Protestant denominations would say, "Yes, okay, we'll go ahead and we'll bow our knees to feminism, and we'll accept this movement." And then in response to that, you had basically the complementarian position start to be developed. And what complementarians want to do is they generally want to thread the needle, and they want to say this.

They want to say that men and women are ontologically equal, meaning that in their being, in their personhood, they are equal in the eyes of God. But God has ordained functional differences between them, and that basically men and women are called differently. And so this would be the most, I think, widely represented position amongst a lot of evangelical Christianity.

And I'm not as current on Roman Catholicism, but this would be widely represented there as well. So complementarism is, for a long time, I thought that was the conservative position. And about 10 years ago, I started thinking about patriarchy and all of the various issues, primarily because I was continually accused of patriarchy, right, down with the patriarchy and all the cultural movements.

And in the beginning, I myself dismissed patriarchy. I was like, "I'm fine with complementarianism." But I started to think about it, and I started to read a little bit more, and I came to the conviction over time that, wait a second, complementarianism doesn't work because it doesn't—I wish I could articulate this further.

It's the kind of thing that, in order to be proper, it needs thought to express properly. But I came to the conclusion that complementarianism was silly. Not silly because a lot of people believe in it, but I came to the conclusion that the Bible itself is patriarchal, and that a patriarchal society is the best-functioning society.

And it's hard to express that in an appropriate way, given our current context, but it just simply works better. There are those who defend it as differently, but you look at the complete falling apart, you say, in many churches, in many parts of society, and to me, it's obvious evidence.

So back to churches, the New Testament is crystal clear that all leadership in the church is to be male, but that's only defined to certain things. And so, for example, you'll say, well, some conservative denominations, right, the Southern Baptists will say, well, only preachers have to be men, but then they'll have women praying on stage, they'll have women leading worship, they'll have women doing all these things.

And I kind of have this conclusion, I think I believe it, I'm pretty sure it's true, but basically, that men are just lazy. And the reason that God has instituted patriarchy in a scriptural context is to get men to do things. Because as a man, if I can sit back and just let my wife do something, that's the easiest thing in the world.

But that leads to complete and total destruction of my family if I do that on an ongoing basis. And so if I weren't specifically commanded by God to lead, and that all of the responsibility is on my shoulders to do it, then I would probably be happy to sit back and not do so much.

And what's remarkable to me is that it was about a decade ago that I came to that grudging realization that if it's to be, it's up to me, and I got to do this. And I've got to express, it's my responsibility. And I don't put anything on my wife, it's my responsibility.

And that started to work good. What's been fascinating to me is I have watched very closely male and female dynamics over the last decade, and we see a complete collapse of dating culture, a complete collapse of relationship formation, a complete collapse of family formation. I'm talking broadly, not even just in Christianity, just across the culture.

And I'm always amazed at the things that men and women thought they wanted that the feminist revolution didn't deliver. And I think we see a lot of response in people going kind of the direction that I've gone. And so there's a tendency often to try to soften that. There's a tendency to change and say, "Well, I'm a patriarch, but I don't say, 'Woman, get me a beer.'" I've tried to even stop qualifying, because I used to do all that stuff, and I realized that, "No, Joshua, just put the responsibility on yourself, be clear, and move forward." And so there are, I think, a lot of people, and I watch some of the Christian conversations, there are a lot of Christian conversations and people that come to that position.

But there are a couple of problems. Number one, it's very uncomfortable, because it puts you out of the cultural norm. And so while I'm happy to respond honestly to a sincere question from you, it's not particularly comfortable for me to talk about this stuff in public. So a lot of guys aren't going to do it.

Number two, it takes people a time to come to it, and also it takes a while for us to recognize what has happened. And so across Christendom, this is happening. But as women have become dominant in churches, it creates a major problem. They feminize the church experience. The pastors start preaching to women, which is repulsive to men.

Then there are fewer men in the churches, and fewer men who are willing to actually step in and lead, so it becomes more feminine. And so then the whole experience of church becomes more feminine, and it just goes on and on and on. And I basically can't stand visiting or going to a lot of churches because of how effeminate they are.

And the preachers themselves are often effeminate. They don't express any kind of admirable masculinity. They don't express any kind of – they're not men that you want to follow in the first place. They're so dominated by their wives and by the women in the church that they can't even stand up and preach.

And I'll tell you – forgive me if I'm on a roll, but I'm trying to answer it forthrightly – here's where the clearest expression of this is. For me, it comes down to Father's Day. I've said this before, and I don't want to put poison, but it's really true, is that I think the worst day for men to ever go to church is on Father's Day.

Basically men should never go to church on Father's Day. If you compare in most churches – and again, I'm not super involved in Roman Catholicism, I don't know what they preach about there – but in evangelical churches, if you go to church on Mother's Day, you will hear the most uplifting sermon about how wonderful our mothers are, and our mothers are wonderful, and we honor them, and they sacrifice for us, etc.

And they're just so wonderful, and we appreciate them, and God has told us to honor our mothers. And the preacher goes on and on and on and on about how great women are, etc. You go to church on Father's Day, preacher stands up and says, "Men, we got to do better.

After all, God has called you to be a man, and you're called to serve God, and so you have to love your family, and you have to serve your family, and whatnot." And he goes on for 60 minutes haranguing the men for not being good enough. Not a single bit of just respect and admiration for simply their maleness, their sexual identity of simply being men.

And it's disgusting. And what happens is that that goes into these men, and it kind of creates the same thing that you're talking about, that you see, and it creates men who go through the world thinking that I don't measure up, I'm not worthy of respect because I got all this stuff wrong with me.

And it's the same thing with our boys, it's the same thing with men, it's a complete catastrophe. So there are places where that, I think, is finally coming out, and where it's talked about, etc. But in order to find them, you've got to find a very conservative, you've got to find a conservative church, or a conservative denomination, and you've got to have a conservative denomination that is willing to stand on a couple things.

Perhaps in your tradition, it would be the tradition of the church, but in general it has to do with believing in the authority and the inerrancy of Scripture. Because the New Testament, and the Old Testament, all the way through the Bible is absolutely patriarchal. I used to think it wasn't.

I used to want to say, like, to the people who said, "Overthrow the patriarchy," I used to want to say, "Oh, well, you know, come on, the Bible raises up women." And all that stuff is true. Like, Jesus treated women much better, women are incredibly highly praised, Christianity revolutionized the world of women.

It completely transformed the role of women in society on a complete basis. And so all that's interesting and true and completely irrelevant to where we are today. Today we've got to flip back to the other and recognize what the Scripture says. And so there are denominations where it's very clear.

In Roman Catholicism, I would say you probably need to go to a Latin Mass. And if you find a Latin Mass, that's where you're going to find a lot of the men who are willing to stand up and lead. Because there's a flow of tradition that leads to the Latin Mass and all of that stuff that leads to men just saying, "Okay, I got to do it.

I got to lead. I got to be strong. I got to take responsibility." In evangelical circles, there's a strong movement of that. In Reform circles, you can find it in a lot of fundamentalist gatherings. And so depending on kind of where you're going, basically you've got to find people who have a high view of Scripture and who are willing to submit themselves to what Scripture says.

And I think that this is, in many ways, it's probably one of the biggest changes that is happening and will happen. Because in an appropriate relationship where men lead, to me it's obvious that women are happy. And when they're cared for and loved and lifted up, etc., and they're married to strong men, it leads to peace in the home and it passes on through the generations.

I have almost no marriage problems, primarily because my entire life I grew up watching a happy, healthy marriage where my father was a strong man, my mother was a strong woman, they had a very clear hierarchy in the home, and watching the piece of that shows me how to do it.

And so I try to—I'll finish with this—but what's frustrating a lot of times is that we often tend to be reactionary to the events of the day. And I especially am guilty of this—oh, sorry, I'm not guilty of this—so if somebody sees that, you know what, you're painting a building and the building is white and you're trying to get the building green.

And one guy comes out and covers the building with red paint. Well, another guy comes out and starts using blue paint because he's trying to go the exact opposite direction. Now, at the end of the day, it winds up being green. But what happens in the meantime is that people get so latched on to a certain subject that they preach their message to an extreme degree.

And a lot of times I think what we need to do is we need to understand why people are super hardcore about extremism, but just shoot straight up the middle. So to this subject, what you see right now is I see just some crazy stuff. Like you look—I follow the Manosphere and the Red Pill movement and whatnot, and I look at some of the guys, the things that these guys are doing, and the people who are popular, and I want nothing to do with them because they're a bunch of toxic—I'd like to use profane language—they're just toxic.

I don't even know the smear that I could use that would express the feeling of my heart. And a lot of these guys, they're just—they're terrible human beings. And they put on this coat of masculinity, and it turns into slave drivers or just like a totally corrupt expression of this that I want nothing to do with.

But then on the flip side, they think that it's only that, or roll over and wear your male feminist shirt. And it's just nonsense. You can do both. You can be a strong leader who is full of love. My favorite version of it is Aubrey Anderlin's Man of Steel and Velvet, and that's what I aspire to do.

I want to be a man of absolute steel, and I want to be a man of velvet, because that's who Jesus was. And that is, to me, the aspiration that we have. And it may be that we have to, at this stage in time, we have to have a little bit more steel than we necessarily used to have, but it can change.

And what is amazing is—what I think will happen in the future is every—sorry, I'm too long, but here's my final comment—all female-dominated churches eventually wither up and blow away. And there are a few basic reasons for that. Number one, men can attract men into church. Male-dominated churches can attract women, but female-dominated churches do not attract men.

They repulse men. And so I have found that a lot of the strongest men don't even bother to go to church. They go other places. They still have their beliefs, but they're forming other communities, because the churches themselves are just repulsive. And it's everything. And it's people they don't even realize.

It's effeminate music, it's effeminate pastors, it's pastors unwilling to tackle hard subjects, etc. Also, female-dominated churches often tend to collapse because they don't execute church discipline. Women do not want to execute church discipline. They don't want to excommunicate people. They don't want to bring discipline on their members. And then because of that, people—everything gets accepted.

And when everything gets accepted, we stand for nothing, and the whole thing collapses. And so basically in the fullness of—and then what happens, it gets worse, is you attract more women, it becomes more and more feminized, it becomes more and more feminized, you have fewer men, and basically the pastor is preaching to a congregation of 70% women, women who come without their husbands, single women, etc.

There's 30% men, but the 30% men themselves are not very masculine and strong, and eventually the thing falls apart. The problem is it takes decades and centuries for that to happen, but you've seen that happen clearly in evangelical Christianity in the United States with the absolute collapse of mainline Protestant denominations.

So it can go the other way, though, is that when men get clear and they start to express themselves in a masculine way, and they start to talk about masculine things, it changes everything, and it's attractive to men. And when it's attractive to men, it's attractive to women, and those churches grow.

And I could point to various denominations, I could point to various churches where you see that happening across the United States, and it's actually influencing a lot of the public debates, etc. And it leads to even things, I mean, again, have you ever been, I'll stop with it, but have you gone to a Latin Mass in the Roman Catholic tradition?

No, not for a long time. You should go to a Latin Mass and compare it to the vernacular Mass that you may attend, and what I would bet you, here's a cold drink on my tab the next time we see you. You go to the Latin Mass, you'll see families that are about three times more common and much bigger, you'll see a lot more men, you'll see a lot more people who are serious about their faith, etc.

It's just obvious from just watching them walk in, and what you will see is, you'll see what you're looking for if you go to there. And again, there are evangelical denominations, the same thing. But you're right that it is a significant thing that's happening across the culture, and it is affecting Christianity in a strong way.

But there are out there, there are plenty of guys out there who are recognizing their responsibility, who are stepping up, and who are changing things. It's affecting the women too. The women feel the same way, a woman I was speaking with last time, she was poo-pooing the softness of Vatican II and all the speech, you know, all the easiness that got implemented when that came through the church, and how she wanted it to be, you know, where's the fasting, where's the penance, where's this all going, and where's the softness coming from?

And we were talking about attending, it's a good suggestion, an Eastern Church service for that same reason, you know, where you're standing the whole time, and yeah, anyhow, I knew I'd get you going, I appreciate it, and it gives me a good place to start. And I intend to have these difficult conversations with the men around here, and I'm not the only guy that wants to have that conversation, and that wants to put that group together.

And so I think, like you say, keep looking. One more, just like little data point. When I was growing up, I had zero exposure to Eastern Orthodoxy, zero. If somebody had asked me what it was, I didn't have a clue. I knew what evangelicals or Protestants were, I knew Roman Catholics, I had friends who were both.

I didn't know anybody who was Eastern Orthodox. Over the last five years, I see nothing but Eastern Orthodox stuff, and I think this is a big reason, because finding liberal traditions within Orthodoxy is very much harder to find than it is in Roman Catholicism or in Protestantism. And the people that I watch who are attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy are generally strong masculine guys who just recognize how toxic so much of the rest of it is.

And so, to your point, it's that there's something interesting. I ran into an Orthodox priest in an airport recently, and I was talking to him, and there's something about it where their tradition is attracting people for this specific reason. And I think what people are finding is that their doctrinal convictions in many cases are quite fluid, and they're more visceral than they are intellectual.

And so it's interesting for theologians to sit around and argue about our distinctions and our doctrinal understandings among branches of Christianity and all of our denominations. But at the end of the day, most people don't have the patience for that, and they go where they feel something, and I mean that on a visceral level.

Does this outfit have a future, as Gary North used to say? Are we going somewhere? And it's pretty obvious that some places are going somewhere and some places aren't, and that's what you can feel without even digging into the doctrine at all. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much.

Yes. Thank you. All right. My pleasure. Fun questions. Like we said, Open Line Friday. Had two other callers that jumped off. That's fine. A two-hour show is plenty. I hope you enjoyed today's Friday Q&A show. Remember, these shows are open to you. I'll do my best. I'll always answer honestly, even when it's difficult, or even if you want to talk about the patriarchy, down with the patriarchy, smash the patriarchy, or promote the patriarchy.

We'll try to answer honestly. So if you'd like to join me on next week's show, just go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Remember last few days, sign up for the event in Panama, expatmoney.com/radical. Sign up for the event that I'm hosting in Panama, expatmoney.com/radical. Answered several questions today on infrastructure, and ironically, I didn't plant the questions, but I've been thinking about that because I think I'm going to release a little mini course here.

Part of it basically just like resetting your financial infrastructure. So today's show motivates me to get that done here more quickly, and I think if this was useful for you, any of these infrastructure questions, keep your ears open for that course that hopefully will come out soon. And those of you who have been waiting on the retirement course to be finished, I'm still working on it.

Just want to make a good version B, the non-beta version coming out, non-beta, the alpha version. Thank you for listening. Have a great weekend. Talk with you very soon. Bye.